NHS Trust set to go cap in hand to government after board meeting tomorrow

The NHS trust behind the stalled Midland Metropolitan Hospital job is set to ask government to bail the project out which has been mothballed ever since its builder Carillion went bust in January.

Toby Lewis, chief executive of the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS trust, said board members will discuss asking government for cash to complete the £350m job – being built under a PFI contract – when it meets tomorrow.

Lewis said: “We will consider an executive recommendation to complete the Midland Metropolitan Hospital construction under direct contract, using public money from national sources. This would be in preference to procuring a new private finance vehicle.”

Lewis said if the board agree to ask the government for a bailout, he expected a decision “in the coming weeks”.

Funding was pulled from the project in June when the European Investment Bank, which was part of a consortium of five banks that loaned the NHS trust £107m to pay for the construction work, confirmed it had terminated the deal.

Lewis reminded the government that prime minister Theresa May had pledged the hospital would be completed in the days following Carillion’s implosion. “Everyone involved recognises the prime minister’s House of Commons promise that the Midland Met will be built,” he said.

The hospital is now expected to be completed in 2022. In June, a National Audit Office report revealed that Carillion had lost £48m alone on the scheme last year and said it had been blighted by a 17 month delay to “critical” design elements, poor structural designs and spatial constraints that made it difficult to fit all the plant machinery necessary on site.